Resort reveals name change

Big Mountain is now Whitefish Mountain Resort

Big Mountain Resort got a new name Wednesday.

On the eve of its 60th anniversary season, the resort has become Whitefish Mountain Resort.

Fred Jones, president and CEO of Big Mountain Resort's parent company, Winter Sports, Inc., made the change official at a grand opening for the resort's new Day Lodge on Wednesday afternoon.

"This is about a lot more than the name," Jones said earlier in the day. "It's the brand and the product. The product is service, the product is fun."

In announcing the name change - beginning what Jones called an "under-the-radar" campaign until a big push planned for this winter - officials of the ski and summer resort called it a "new branding and positioning initiative."

It's intended to identify the resort more closely with the city, and acknowledge how skiers from other regions relate to Big Mountain.

"We've been through a detailed analysis of (the resort's) strengths and weaknesses, the marketing … to define ourselves better," Jones said. "We want to focus in on that market segment we appeal to."

That segment, he said, identifies with the ethic found in Whitefish itself - "the friendly and helpful attitudes, unpretentiousness, and a laid-back comfortable environment," is how a press release described it.

The new moniker aims to build "a closer integration between the town and the resort." Jones hopes to pull in a bigger audience looking for a more relaxed experience than found at glitzy resorts.

it's also been tough through the years for out-of-staters to distinguish between Big Mountain and Big Sky Resort south of Bozeman.

Paul Badgley of Whitefish was one of many who testified to that confusion Wednesday. He skis more than 100 days a year, and talks with plenty of visitors.

"Riding the chairs, there's a lot of times when I'm on the chair with people from other states. They don't know the difference between Big Sky and Big Mountain."

The new name should help clear up the confusion, he said.

"It probably has its validity, but the people like the tradition of the Big Mountain name," Badgley said. As a board member for the DREAM disabled ski program, he admitted his love for the traditional name but conceded the practicality of the change. "There's two sides to the coin."

Occasional name-change initiatives have been in the Big Mountain Resort's picture almost from its 1947 beginnings.

Early efforts to name it Hell Roaring were scuttled when it offended the sensibilities of some townspeople. Later came the suggestion for Haskill Mountain. But the one that stuck finally arrived when, as stories have it, Lloyd "Mully" Muldown stood on Chicken Ridge to the west of Whitefish, pointed to the northeast and told his buddies, "You haven't skied until you've skied that big mountain."

Today, U.S. Forest Service maps identify the peak on the Tally Lake Ranger District as Big Mountain.

"Ever since the mountain was started, groups of people have been saying, 'Why do we have to call it by such a boring name when it could be anything?'" longtime Flathead resident and former Whitefish Pilot owner Jackie Adams said.

In recent years, she said, "there was a feeling that they didn't want to exclude other parts of the valley from a claim of pride and ownership."

But the new name, she said, formalizes what people have called it all along.

"I don't think it's such a bad idea," Adams said. "It's been known as Big Mountain for 60 years but people from out of the area don't refer to it as Big Mountain. They say 'Whitefish.'"

There's more to it than just the name, Jones said.

The branding initiative helps the resort launch a "comprehensive set of initiatives" - beginning with $20 million put into the Day Lodge, two high-speed quad chair lifts and a new beginning-skier area.

"Our offering is often underestimated and misunderstood and to many more, our name is highly generic," Jones said in the press release.

"We got confused with Big Sky (resort) a lot," Jones said Wednesday. Montana's nickname as Big Sky Country, the increasing prevalence of "big mountain" in ski equipment marketing, and the word "big" in several other resort names meant the confusion would only grow.

Jones said Wednesday's announcement and the unveiling of the resort's new logo followed nine months of research.

Tom Suiter, artist, part-time Whitefish resident and creative director for Apple computers in the 1980s, was a key player in the study.

He worked with Charles Rashall, of the San Francisco-based company brandadvisors, to help Big Mountain define and develop exactly what it offers. Between them, they already have put many corporate heavy-hitters in the heightened public eye.

Suiter wanted the logo to reflect the resort's identity - thus the demise of the Big Mountain Resort's traditional snowflake logo.

"The snowflake is generic," he said Wednesday, "but here's this cool little fish."

Building on a subculture that developed a decade ago around the phrase "Ski the Fish," he designed a fish with a snow-capped mountain forming its spine, swimming with fins of leaves to signify the forests of the Flathead and Glacier National Park and propelled by a tail holding the waters of Whitefish Lake.

Other iterations of the logo will find the fish on skis, on a snowboard, on a bike - urging people to Ski the Fish, Board the Fish, and Bike the Fish.

"When we showed it to employees today, it clicked," Suiter said. "They loved it … We really presented it as, 'Let's make sure this is a world-class resort.'"

Jones and Suiter said employees were on board with the change.

Big Mountain has been employing about 120 in the summer season and 550 in the winter. Jones said there are no plans to change those numbers.

Norm Kurtz, who followed in Ed Schenck's footsteps as president and general manager for Big Mountain in its earlier days, is reserving judgment.

"They can call it whatever they want, I don't care," Kurtz said. "I love that place. I've been up there for 45 years."

He sees the name change as "a bit trite," and isn't sure he likes the idea that out-of-staters are making that and many other changes.

"Ed … wanted it to be a world-class resort, he didn't necessarily want it to be a world-sized resort," he said.

"We had one of the finest employee crews of any resort in the country, and you can quote me on that." Many of them still are there, Kurtz said.

He reveled in the days when the Big Mountain sowed the seeds for Whitefish traditions, such as Winter Carnival and youth leagues. But, with the ownership change, he said he saw the writing on the wall and sold all his stock at a good profit a few years back.

"I am sad they're changing the traditions as fast as they can," Kurtz said. "I'm disappointed as to their course."

Marguerite Schenck, Ed Schenck's widow, is fine with the name change.

"That's all right," she said. Years back, she said she had favored the Hell Roaring Mountain name, but lost out.

She went through "a lot of lean years" on the mountain, then "pretty much had to sell what little stock I had" a couple years back in a stock split when the company went private.

"It's been the Big Mountain for 60 years. I don't object to the name change at all, it doesn't make a bit of difference," Schenck said.

Sandie Carpenter, who lives on the mountain and skied 102 days last year, is all for it.

"I think the new name is terrific. I think it says where we are," Carpenter said.

"And remember our logo is the snowflake," she added. "I always thought the snowflake was ordinary. Now we're Whitefish Mountain and we have a fish and a mountain!"

It's a good business decision, said Sportsman and Ski Haus president and CEO Mike Gwiazdon.

"That builds a reputation and it helps with the identity," Gwiazdon said. "There is a tremendous amount of confusion between the two resorts. Most people remember Big Sky, but not Big Mountain."

But, he conceded, "I have a sense of nostalgia. I've been here since 1964, so I feel a sense of loss that way."

Whitefish Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sheila Bowen is all for "anytime that Whitefish can be promoted."

"We have visitors come in all the time that do not know that we have a ski resort and they also do not know that we have a lake," Bowen said. So they send visitors up to Big Mountain resort to get the panoramic view.

"Now it makes sense to say, 'You go up to the Whitefish Resort,' and it kind of gives a true feeling that it's all one community."

Cindy Thompson, now living in Chandler, Ariz., is a native Whitefish skier who grew up wondering why it wasn't part of Whitefish in the first place. She still tries to make a yearly trip back to her home mountain.

"It's kind of a mixed thing, growing up with it being Big Mountain," and living just a mile from the resort turn-off as a child, she said. But she also said the old giving way to the new is a good idea.

"I think it's about time, but it will take time to get used to," Thompson said. "It'll probably be Big Mountain a long time in our minds."